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Sir Tony Atkinson

Sir Tony Atkinson, a giant of intellect and humanity in equal measure, will be so deeply missed. We will long remember him with respect, admiration and fondness. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.

Professor Atkinson, who died on January 1 2017, was an academic economist particularly concerned with issues of social justice and the design of public policy. He has been writing on economics since the 1960s, when his first book was on poverty in Britain and his second on the unequal distribution of wealth.

He was a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. He made a name for himself through his research into income distribution and social inequality.

He recently completed a report for the World Bank on monitoring global poverty, as chair of the Commission on Global Poverty. The Commission was asked to provide advice on two questions. What should be the interpretation going forward of the definition of extreme poverty, set in 2015 at $1.90 a day per person in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)-adjusted dollars? What choices should the World Bank make regarding complementary measures – both monetary and non-monetary – of poverty to be tracked and made available to policy-makers?